Morning
“There’s the part you braced yourself for, and then there’s the other part.”
- The Mountain Goats, “Liza Forever Minelli”
How does the sea swallow the mountains?
How does rain shatter stone?
A thousand tiny kisses.
Until waking, walking unaided is impossible:
until the only certainty is the sun’s bedraggled rise:
and all is of little value.
I ask forgiveness from those around me.
This is the time when the soul is dragged back into the body
like a wild animal, from its long, wide, roaming-ground;
bathed, dripping, honeyed in the light from which it was born
to which it must one day return
and these cave-wall shadows shield our eyes from the light.
So life proceeds in reverse, the coffee-cup
leaping into your hands and reassembling
the birds swallowing their dawn chorus
There’s sleep in your eyes still.
I never thought I’d see the sun so close.
In sleep, we wake: on waking, we dream.
“There’s the part you braced yourself for, and then there’s the other part.”
- The Mountain Goats, “Liza Forever Minelli”
How does the sea swallow the mountains?
How does rain shatter stone?
A thousand tiny kisses.
Until waking, walking unaided is impossible:
until the only certainty is the sun’s bedraggled rise:
and all is of little value.
I ask forgiveness from those around me.
This is the time when the soul is dragged back into the body
like a wild animal, from its long, wide, roaming-ground;
bathed, dripping, honeyed in the light from which it was born
to which it must one day return
and these cave-wall shadows shield our eyes from the light.
So life proceeds in reverse, the coffee-cup
leaping into your hands and reassembling
the birds swallowing their dawn chorus
There’s sleep in your eyes still.
I never thought I’d see the sun so close.
In sleep, we wake: on waking, we dream.
